A study published in Nature on February 10th 2016 indicates that the divergence between humans and gorillas took place more than 8 million years ago. This discovery was made possible by new paleontological and geological work performed at Chorora, in eastern Ethiopia, by an international research team directed by researchers from Ethiopia and Japan (University of Tokyo). Two members of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies coauthored this study: Yonas Beyene (prehistorian, co-leader of the research) 1, and Jean-Renaud Boisserie (paleontologist, CNRS researcher)2.